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UNIVERSITY 

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FRIENDS  OF 
DUKE  UNIVERSITY 
LIBRARY 

GIFT  OF 


Mrs.  W.  A.  Perlzv^eig 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
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The  Stoic  Philosophy 


Conway  Memorial  Lecture 

Delivered  at  South  Place  Institute  on 
March  16,  1915 


By 

Gilbert  Murray,  LL.D.,  D.Litt. 


G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons 

New  York  and  London 


tTbe  Umicfterbocfcer  press 

1915 


Copyright,  191s 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Ubc  Ifcnlclierbocfeer  iprees,  TOew  Jl)orft 


CHAIRMAN’S  INTRODUCTORY 
ADDRESS 

|N  the  far-off,  almost  fabulous,  Golden 
Age  before  the  War,  I once  attended 
a lecture  by  our  speaker  of  to-night, 
Professor  Gilbert  Murray.  It  was  a most 
entertaining  and  instructive  lecture;  but 
what  I chiefly  learned  on  that  occasion 
was  a lesson  I hope  never  to  forget — as 
to  the  duties  of  a Chairman.  Nothing 
would  tempt  me  to  reveal  who  the  Chair- 
man was:  I will  only  say  that  I don’t 
think  he  has  ever  figured,  or  ever  will 
figure,  on  this  platform.  His  speech 
was  a conspicuous  and  masterly  example 

3 

5GV337 


4 


Introductory  Address 


of  how  not  to  do  it.  He  began  by  con- 
fessing that  he  knew  nothing  of  Professor 
Murray’s  subject,  but  went  on  to  explain 
that  he  had  read  it  up  for  the  occasion 
in  an  Encyclopaedia;  and  thereupon  he 
retailed  at  great  length,  and  in  a most 
lugubrious  fashion,  the  information  he 
had  gleaned  from  that  work  of  reference. 
There  happened  to  be  two  or  three  anec- 
dotes, manifestly  the  plums  of  the  sub- 
ject; and  the  Chairman  must  needs  put 
in  his  thumb  and  pull  out  those  plums, 
and  spoil  them  for  the  lecturer  by  serv- 
ing them  up  with  consummate  insipidity. 
What  Professor  Murray  must  have  suf- 
fered in  having  his  subject  thus  broken 
on  the  wheel,  I shudder  even  now  to 
think.  His  conduct  was  certainly  a 
noble  example  of  Stoicism.  Had  I been 


Introductory  Address  5 

in  his  place,  I should  infallibly  have  risen 
up  and  slain  that  Chairman,  and  claimed 
from  a jury  of  my  countrymen  a verdict 
of  “ Served  him  right!” 

The  lesson  of  that  occasion  was  burnt 
into  my  soul;  so  Professor  Murray  need 
not  fear  that  I am  going  to  pour  out  to 
you  the  stores  of  my  erudition  on  the 
subject  of  the  Stoics.  No  doubt,  half  an 
hour  with  the  Encyclop&dia  Britannica 
would  have  supplied  me  with  some 
capital  anecdotes  of  Zeno,  and  Epictetus, 
and  Marcus  Aurelius;  but  I have  sternly 
averted  my  face  from  temptation.  The 
ideal  Chairman,  as  I conceive  him,  ought 
to  emulate  as  nearly  as  possible  the  ideal 
child — who  is  “seen  but  not  heard.”  If 
I fall  away  from  that  ideal,  it  is  only  to 
express  my  belief  that  there  is  no  man  in 


SG^SG? 


6 


Introductory  Address 


England  whom  Moncure  Conway,  were 
he  alive,  would  more  warmly  welcome  to 
this  platform  than  our  speaker  of  to- 
night. His  presence  here  is  a proof  that 
that  large-minded  humanism  for  which 
Conway  stood  and  strove  is  making  extra- 
ordinary progress  even  in  our  apparently 
slow-moving  England.  For  Professor 
Murray,  as  you  all  know,  is  not  a bio- 
logist, not  a physicist,  not  a chemist. 
He  has  not  pursued  any  of  those  studies 
of  cause  and  effect  which  were  supposed, 
in  the  Victorian  era,  to  lead  to  perilous 
enlightenment — and  did,  in  fact,  lead 
to  enlightenment,  whether  perilous  or 
not.  He  is  not  even  a mathematician, 
hardened  in  the  audacious  heresy  that 
two  and  two  make  four.  No,  his  life- 
work  has  lain  among  those  literce  humani- 


Introductory  Address 


7 


ores  which  have  so  often  been  associated, 
in  the  past,  with  violent  Toryism  in 
politics  and  dense  obscurantism  in 
thought.  He  does  not  come  to  us  from 
godless  London  University,  nor  even 
from  Cambridge  with  its  mildly  Whiggish 
proclivities.  He  is  a son,  and  a very 
loyal  son,  of  Oxford;  but  he  has  known 
how  to  absorb  the  best  of  her  culture — 
if  I may  use  a somewhat  discredited  word 
— without  drinking  in  either  her  pre- 
judices or  her  snobbishnesses  or  her 
cowardices.  I suppose  we  may  take 
Matthew  Arnold  as  a type  of  Oxford 
enlightenment  in  the  last  generation,  and 
I am  far  from  undervaluing  his  work  or 
his  influence;  but  imagine  Matthew 
Arnold  coming  down  to  address  us  here 
to-night!  Or  think  of  Pater!  Think  of 


8 


Introductory  Address 


the  vague  and  vaporous  aesthetic  pagan- 
ism which  was  all  that  Pater  could  extract 
from  the  spiritual  sustenance  offered 
him  by  Oxford!  Professor  Murray,  as 
we  know,  occupies  one  of  the  greatest 
positions  in  English  scholarship;  but 
while  he  is  eminently  a scholar  among 
scholars,  he  is  pre-eminently  a man 
among  men.  His  imagination  and  insight, 
working  upon  a solid  basis  of  knowledge, 
give  him  an  extraordinary  power — as  no 
doubt  he  will  show  you  to-night — of 
revivifying  Greek  thought  and  experi- 
ence, and  making  it  human  and  real  to  us. 
Ancient  Greece  is  not,  to  him,  a pictur- 
esque phenomenon  to  be  contemplated 
under  a glass  case,  but  an  absorbing 
chapter  in  the  story  of  humanity,  full  of 
vital  meanings  for  the  present  and  for  the 


Introductory  Address  9 

future.  What  has  specially  attracted 
him  to  Euripides,  we  may  be  sure,  is,  in 
the  last  analysis,  neither  his  lyric  splen- 
dour nor  his  dramatic  subtlety,  but  his 
daring  rationalism  and  his  passionate 
resentment  of  the  stupidities  and  cruelties 
which  are  summed  up  in  the  phrase 
“man’s  inhumanity  to  man.”  These 
cruelties,  these  stupidities,  are  always 
with  us,  more  or  less,  and  are,  as  we  know 
to  our  cost,  liable  to  frightful  recrudes- 
cences. No  one  is  more  resolute  in 
combating  them  than  Professor  Murray. 
He  is  one  of  our  foremost  champions  of 
reason  and  humanity.  I am  sure  that 
Moncure  Conway  would  warmly  have 
appreciated  the  consistency,  the  sin- 
cerity, and  the  courage  of  his  intellec- 
tual attitude,  and  would  especially  have 


io  Introductory  Address 

welcomed  it  as  a product  of  modern 
Oxford. 

For  Professor  Murray  does  not  stand 
alone.  He  is  one  of  a group  of  scholars, 
his  contemporaries  and  his  juniors,  who 
are  converting  Oxford  from  a home  of  lost 
causes  into  a Great  Headquarters  for 
causes  yet  to  be  won.  Is  it  not  a most 
encouraging  sign  of  the  times  that  that 
admirable  series,  the  Home  University 
Library,  should  be  edited  by  two  New 
College  dons,  Professor  Murray  and  Mr. 
Herbert  Fisher,  now  Vice-Chancellor  of 
Sheffield  University?  What  would  Mon- 
cure Conway  have  said  if  any  one  had 
predicted  that,  within  seven  years  of  his 
death,  such  a book  as  Professor  Bury’s 
History  of  Freedom  of  Thought  would  be 
written  by  the  Regius  Professor  of 


Introductory  Address  1 1 

History  at  Cambridge,  and  published 
under  the  editorship  of  the  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Greek  at  Oxford?  I think  he 
would  have  said,  “No,  no;  the  world 
does  not  move  so  quickly  as  that! ” But 
it  does  move;  it  has  moved;  and  I am 
optimist  enough  to  hope  that  the  present 
outburst  of  colossal  unreason,  alleged  to 
be  under  the  patronage  of  God,  may  in  the 
end  promote  the  cause  of  reason,  or  at 
any  rate  may  not  involve  any  intellectual 
setback.  With  that  hope  in  view,  let  us 
not  cease  to  fight  the  good  fight  of 
spiritual  illumination. 

I now  call  upon  Professor  Murray. 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 

| FEEL  a peculiar  pleasure  in  being 
asked  to  give  this  address  in  com- 
memoration of  Moncure  D.  Conway.  I 
knew  Mr.  Conway  but  slightly.  But 
when  I was  a boy  and  struggling  with 
religious  difficulties  his  books  were  among 
those  which  brought  me  both  comfort 
and  liberation.  And  all  those  who  in  our 
generation  are  stirred  either  by  their 
doubts  or  their  convictions  to  a con- 
sciousness of  duties  not  yet  stamped  by 
the  approval  of  their  community,  may 
well  recognize  him  as  one  of  their  guiding 
beacons.  His  character  is  written  large 


13 


14  The  Stoic  Philosophy- 

in  the  history  of  his  life.  Few  men  of  our 
time  have  been  put  so  clearly  to  the  test 
and  so  unhesitatingly  sacrificed  their 
worldly  interests  to  their  consciences. 
This  strain  of  heroic  quality,  which  lay 
beneath  Mr.  Conway’s  unpretentious 
kindliness  and  easy  humour,  makes,  I 
think,  the  subject  of  my  address  this 
evening  not  inappropriate  to  his 
memory. 

v/ 1 wish  in  this  lecture  to  give  in  rough 
outline  some  account  of  the  greatest 
system  of  organized  thought  which  the 
mind  of  man  had  built  up  for  itself  in  the 
Grseco-Roman  world  before  the  coming 
of  Christianity  with  its  inspired  book 
and  its  authoritative  revelation.  Sto- 
icism may  be  called  either  a philosophy  or 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  15 


a religion.  It  was  a religion  in  its  exalted 
passion;  it  was  a philosophy  inasmuch  as 
it  made  no  pretence  to  magical  powers 
or  supernatural  knowledge.  I do  not 
suggest  that  it  is  a perfect  system,  with 
no  errors  of  fact  and  no  inconsistencies  of 
theory.  It  is  certainly  not  that ; and  I do 
not  know  of  any  system  that  is.  But  I 
believe  that  it  represents  a way  of  looking 
at  the  world  and  the  practical  problems 
of  life  which  possesses  still  a permanent 
interest  for  the  human  race,  and  a per- 
manent power  of  inspiration.  I shall 
approach  it,  therefore,  rather  as  a psycho- 
logist than  as  a philosopher  or  historian. 
I shall  not  attempt  to  trace  the  growth 
or  variation  of  Stoic  doctrine  under  its 
various  professors,  nor  yet  to  scrutinize 
the  logical  validity  of  its  arguments.  I 


1 6 The  Stoic  Philosophy 

shall  merely  try  as  best  I can  to  make 
intelligible  its  great  central  principles 
and  the  almost  irresistible  appeal  which 
they  made  to  so  many  of  the  best  minds 
of  antiquity. 

From  this  point  of  view  I will  begin  by  a 
very  rough  general  suggestion — viz.,  that 
the  religions  known  to  history  fall  into  two 
broad  classes,  religions  which  are  suited 
for  times  of  good  government  and  re- 
ligions which  are  suited  for  times  of  bad 
government;  religions  for  prosperity  or 
for  adversity,  religions  which  accept  the 
world  or  which  defy  the  world,  which 
place  their  hopes  in  the  betterment  of 
human  life  on  this  earth  or  which  look 
away  from  it  as  from  a vale  of  tears.  By 
“the  world”  in  this  connection  I mean 
the  ordinary  concrete  world,  the  well- 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


1 7 


known  companion  of  the  flesh  and  the 
Devil ; not  the  universe.  For  some  of  the 
religions  which  think  most  meanly  of 
the  world  they  know  have  a profound  y/ 
admiration  for  all,  or  nearly  all,  those 
parts  of  the  universe  where  they  have 
not  been. 

Now,  to  be  really  successful  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  a religion  must  suit 
both  sets  of  circumstances.  A religion 
which  fails  in  adversity,  which  deserts 
you  just  when  the  world  deserts  you, 
would  be  a very  poor  affair;  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  almost  equally  fatal  for  a 
religion  to  collapse  as  soon  as  it  is  success- 
ful. Stoicism,  like  Christianity,  was  ^ 
primarily  a religion  for  the  oppressed,  a 
religion  of  defence  and  defiance;  but,  like 
Christianity,  it  had  the  requisite  power 


1 8 The  Stoic  Philosophy 


of  adaptation.  Consistently  or  inconsist- 
ently, it  opened  its  wings  to  embrace  the 
heeds  both  of  success  and  of  failure.  To 
illustrate  what  I mean — contrast  for  a 
moment  the  life  of  an  active,  practical, 
philanthropic,  modern  Bishop  with  that 
of  an  anchorite  like  St.  Simeon  Stylites, 
living  in  idleness  and  filth  on  the  top  of 
a large  column;  or,  again,  contrast  the 
Bishop’s  ideals  with  those  of  the  author 
of  the  Apocalypse,  abandoning  himself 
to  visions  of  a gorgeous  reversal  of  the 
order  of  this  evil  world  and  the  bloody 
revenges  of  the  blessed.  All  three  are 
devout  Christians;  but  the  Bishop  is 
working  with  the  world  of  men,  seeking 
its  welfare  and  helping  its  practical  needs; 
the  other  two  are  rejecting  or  cursing  it. 
In  somewhat  the  same  way  we  shall  find 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  19 

that  our  two  chief  preachers  of  Stoicism 
are,  the  one  a lame  and  penniless  slave 
to  whom  worldly  success  is  as  nothing, 
the  other  an  Emperor  of  Rome,  keenly 
interested  in  good  administration. 

The  founder  of  the  Stoic  school,  Zeno, 
came  from  Cilicia  to  Athens  about  the 
year  320  b.c.  His  place  of  birth  is, 
perhaps,  significant.  He  was  a Semite, 
and  came  from  the  East.  The  Semite 
was  apt  in  his  religion  to  be  fierier  and 
more  uncompromising  than  the  Greek. 
The  time  of  his  coming  is  certainly 
significant. ^ It  was  a time  when  land- 
marks had  collapsed,  and  human  life 
was  left,  as  it  seemed,  without  a guide. A 
The  average  man  in  Greece  of  the  fifth 
century  b.c.  had  two  main  guides  and 
sanctions  for  his  conduct  of  life:  the  wel- 


20 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


fare  of  his  City  and  the  laws  and  tradi- 
tions  of  his  ancestors.  First  the  City, 
and  next  the  traditional  religion;  and  in 
the  fourth  century  both  of  these  had 
fallen.  Let  us  see  how. 

Devotion  to  the  City  or  Community 
produced  a religion  of  public  service. 
The  City  represented  a high  ideal,  and  it 
represented  supreme  power.  By  320 
b.c.  the  supreme  power  had  been  over- 
thrown. Athens,  and  all  independent 
Greek  cities,  had  fallen  before  the  over- 
whelming force  of  the  great  military 
monarchies  of  Alexander  and  his  generals. 
The  high  ideal  at  the  same  time  was  seen 
to  be  narrow.  The  community  to  which 
a man  should  devote  himself,  if  he  should 
devote  himself  at  all,  must  surely  be, 
something  larger  than  one  of  these  walled; 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


21 


cities  set  upon  their  separate  hills.  Thus 
the  City,  as  a guide  of  life,  had  proved 
wanting.  Now  when  the  Jews  lost  their 
Holy  City  they  had  still,  or  believed 
that  they  had  still,  a guide  left.  “Zion 
is  taken  from  us,”  says  the  Book  of 
Esdras;  “nothing  is  left  save  the  Holy 
One  and  His  Law.”  But  Greece  had  no 
such  Law.  The  Greek  religious  tradition 
had  long  since  been  riddled  with  criticism. 
It  would  not  bear  thinking  out,  and  the 
Greeks  liked  to  think  things  out.  The 
traditional  religion  fell  not  because  the 
people  were  degenerate.  Quite  the  con- 

E^rary;  it  fell,  as  it  has  sometimes  fallen 
Isewhere,  because  the  people  were  pro- 
ressive.  The  people  had  advanced,  and 
the  traditional  religion  had  not  kept  pace 
with  them.  And  we  may  add  another 


22  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

consideration.  If  the  Gods  of  tradition 
had  proved  themselves  capable  of  protect- 
ing their  worshippers,  doubtless  their 
many  moral  and  intellectual  deficiencies 
might  have  been  overlooked.  But  they 
had  not.  They  had  proved  no  match 
for  Alexander  and  the  Macedonian 
phalanx. 

Thus  the  work  that  lay  before  the 
"generation  of  320  B.c.  was  twofold.  They 
had  to  rebuild  a new  public  spirit,  de- 
voted not  to  the  City,  but  to  something 
greater;  and  they  had  to  rebuild  a religion 
or  philosophy  which  should  be  a safe 
guide  in  the  threatening  chaos.  We 
will  see  how  Zeno  girded  himself  to  this 
task. 

Two  questions  lay  before  him — how 
to  live  and  what  to  believe.  His  real 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


23 


interest  was  in  the  first,  but  it  could  not 
be  answered  without  first  facing  the 
second.  For  if  we  do  not  in  the  least 
know  what  is  true  or  untrue,  real  or  un- 
real, we  cannot  form  any  reliable  rules 
about  conduct  or  anything  else.  And, 
as  it  happened,  the  Sceptical  school  of 
philosophy,  largely  helped  by  Plato,  had 
lately  been  active  in  denying  the  possi- 
bility of  human  knowledge  and  throwing 
doubt  on  the  very  existence  of  reality. 
Their  arguments  were  extraordinarily 
good,  and  many  of  them  have  not  been 
answered  yet;  they  affect  both  the 
credibility  of  the  senses  and  the  supposed 
laws  of  reasoning.  The  Sceptics  showed 
how  the  senses  are  notoriously  fallible 
and  contradictory,  and  how  the  laws  of 
reasoning  lead  by  equally  correct  pro- 


2 4 The  Stoic  Philosophy 

cesses  to  opposite  conclusions.  Many 
modern  philosophers,  from  Kant  to  Dr. 
Schiller  and  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell,  have 
followed  respectfully  in  their  footsteps. 
But  Zeno  had  no  patience  with  this  sort 
of  thing.  He  wanted  to  get  to  business. 

Also  he  was  a born  fighter.  His  deal- 
ings with  opponents  who  argued  against 
him  always  remind  me  of  a story  told  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  when  his  word 
was  doubted  by  a subaltern.  The  Duke, 
when  he  was  very  old  and  incredibly 
distinguished,  was  telling  how  once,  at 
mess  in  the  Peninsula,  his  servant  had 
opened  a bottle  of  port,  and  inside  found 
a rat.  “It  must  have  been  a very  large 
bottle,”  remarked  the  subaltern.  The 
Duke  fixed  him  with  his  eye.  “It  was 
a damned  small  bottle.”  “Oh, ” said  the 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  25 

subaltern,  abashed;  “then  no  doubt  it 
was  a very  small  rat . ” “It  was  a damned 
large  rat,”  said  the  Duke.  And  there 
the  matter  has  rested  ever  since, 
u Zeno  began  by  asserting  the  existence 
of  the  real  world.  “What  do  you  mean 
by  real?”  asked  the  Sceptic.  “I  mean 
solid  and  material.  I mean  that  this 
table  is  solid  matter.”  “And  God,” 
said  the  Sceptic,  “and  the  soul?  Are 
they  solid  matter?”  “Perfectly  solid,” 
says  Zeno;  “more  solid,  if  anything,  than 
the  table.”  “And  virtue  or  justice  or 
the  Rule  of  Three;  also  solid  matter?” 
“Of  course,”  said  Zeno;  “quite  solid.” 
This  is  what  may  be  called  “high  doc- 
trine,” and  Zeno’s  successors  eventually 
explained  that  their  master  did  not  really 
mean  that  justice  was  solid  matter,  but 


26  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

that  it  was  a sort  of  “tension,  ” or  mutual 
relation,  among  material  objects.  This 
amendment  saves  the  whole  situation. 
But  it  is  well  to  remember  the  uncom- 
promising materialism  from  which  the 
Stoic  system  started.  Y 

Now  we  can  get  a step  further.  If  the 
world  is  real,  how  do  we  know  about  it? 

I By  the  evidence  of  our  senses;  for  the 
sense-impression  (here  Stoics  and  Epicu- 
reans both  followed  the  fifth-century 
physicists)  is  simply  the  imprint  of  the 
real  thing  upon  our  mind-stuff.  As  such 
it  must  be  true.  In  the  few  exceptional 
cases  where  we  say  that  “our  senses 
deceive  us”  we  speak  incorrectly.  The 
sense-impression  was  all  right;  it  is  we 
who  have  interpreted  it  wrongly,  or  re- 
ceived it  in  some  incomplete  way. v'  What 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  27 


we  need  in  each  case  is  a “comprehensive 
sense-impression.”  The  meaning  of  this 
phrase  is  not  quite  clear.  I think  it 
means  a sense-impression  which  “grasps” 
its  object;  but  it  may  be  one  which 
“grasps”  us,  or  which  we  “grasp,”  so 
that  we  cannot  doubt  it.  In  any  case, 
when  we  get  the  real  imprint  of  the  object 
upon  our  senses,  then  this  imprint  is  of 
necessity  true/  When  the  Sceptics  talk 
about  a conjuror  making  “our  senses 
deceive  us,”  or  when  they  object  that  a 
straight  stick  put  half  under  water  looks 
as  if  it  were  bent  in  the  middle,  they  are 
talking  inexactly.  In  such  cases  the 
impression  is  perfectly  true;  it  is  the 
interpretation  that  may  go  wrong.  Simi- 
larly, when  they  argue  that  reasoning  is 
fallacious  because  men  habitually  make 


28 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


mistakes  in  it,  they  are  confusing  the 
laws  of  reasoning  with  the  inexact  use 
which  people  make  of  them.  You  might 
just  as  well  say  that  twice  two  is  not  four, 
or  that  7 x 7 is  not  49,  because  people  often 
ake  mistakes  in  doing  arithmetic. 


Thus  we  obtain  a world  which  is  in  the 
first  place  real  and  in  the  second  knowable. 
Now  we  can  get  to  work  on  our  real 
philosophy,  our  doctrine  of  ethics  and 
conduct.  And  we  build  it  upon  a very 
simple  principle,  laid  down  first  by  Zeno’s 
master,  Crates,  the  foundep  of  the  Cynic 
School:  the  principle  that^ -Nothing  but 
Goodness  is  Good.  That  seems  plain 
enough,  and  harmless  enough;  and  so 
does  its  corollary:  “Nothing  but  bad- 

ness is  bad.”  In  the  case  of  any  concrete 
object  which  you  call  “good,”  it  seems 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  29 


quite  clear  that  it  is  only  good  because 
of  some  goodness  in  it.  We,  perhaps, 
should  not  express  the  matter  in  quite 
this  way,  but  we  should  scarcely  think  it 
worth  while  to  object  if  Zeno  chooses  to 
phrase  it  so,  especially  as  the  statement 
itself  seems  little  better  than  a truism. 

Now,  to  an  ancient  Greek  the  form  of 
the  phrase  was  quite  familiar.  He  was 
accustomed  to  asking,  “What  is  the 
good?”  It  was  to  him  the  central  ; 
problem  of  conduct.  It  meant:  “What! 
is  the  object  of  life,  or  the  element  in  - 
things  which  makes  them  worth  having?  ” ' 
Thus  the  principle  will  mean:  “Nothing 
is  worth  living  for  except  goodness.”  / 


“good”  he  means  good  in  an  ultimate 


The  only  good  for  man  is  to  be  good. 
And,  as  we  might  expect,  when  Zeno  says 


30 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


Day-of- Judgment  sense,  and  will  take  no, 
half -measures.  The  principle  turns  out 
to  be  not  nearly  so  harmless  as  it  looked. 
It  begins  by  making  a clean  sweep  of  the 
ordinary  conventions.  ^ You  remember 
the  eighteenth-century  lady’s  epitaph 
which  ends:  “Bland,  passionate,  and 

deeply  religious,  she  was  second  cousin 
to  the  Earl  of  Leitrim,  and  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.”^  One  doubts 
whether,  when  the  critical  moment  came, 
her  relationships  would  really  prove  as 
important  as  her  executors  hoped;  and 
it  is  the  same  with  all  the  conventional 
goods  of  the  world  when  brought  before 
the  bar  of  Zeno.  Rank,  riches,  social 
distinction,  health,  pleasure,  barriers  of 
race  or  nation — what  will  those  things 
matter  before  the  tribunal  of  ultimate 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


3i 


truth?  Not  a jot.  Nothing  but  good- 
ness is  good.  is  what  you  are  that 
matters— what  you  yourself  are;  and  all 
these  things  are  not  you.j  They  are 
external;  they  depend  not  on  you  alone, 
but  on  other  people.  The  thing  that 
really  matters  depends  on  you,  and  on 
none  but  you.  From  this  there  flows  a 
very  important  and  surprising  conclusion. 
You  possess  already,  if  you  only  knew  it, 
all  that  is  worth  desiring.  The  good  is 
yours  if  you  but  will  it.  You  need  fear 
1 nothing.  You  are  safe,  inviolable,  utterly 
free.  A wicked  man  or  an  accident  can 
cause  you  pain,  break  your  leg,  make 
you  ill;  but  no  earthly  power  can  make 
you  good  or  bad  except  yourself,  and  to 
be  good  or  bad  is  the  only  thing  that 
matters. 


If 


32  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

At  this  point  common  sense  rebels. 
The  plain  man  says  to  Zeno:  “This  is 
all  very  well ; but  we  know  as  a matter  of 
fact  that  such  things  as  health,  pleasure, 
long  life,  fame,  etc.,  are  good;  we  all  like 
them.  The  reverse  are  bad;  we  hate  and 
avoid  them.  All  sane,  healthy  people 
agree  in  judging  so.”  Zeno’s  answer  is 
interesting.  In  the  first  place,  he  says: 
“ Yes ; that  is  what  most  people  say.  But 
the  judges  who  give  that  judgment  are 
bribed.  Pleasure,  though  not  really 
good,  has  just  that  particular  power  of 
bribing  the  judges,  and  making  them  on 
each  occasion  say  or  believe  that  she  is 
good.  The  Assyrian  king  Sardanapalus 
thinks  it  good  to  stay  in  his  harem,  feast- 
ing and  merry-making,  rather  than  suffer 
hardship  in  governing  his  kingdom.  He 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


33 


swears  his  pleasure  is  good;  but  what 
will  any  unbribed  third  person  say? 
Consider  the  judgments  of  history.  Do 
you  ever  find  that  history  praises  a man 
because  he  was  healthy,  or  long-lived,  or 
because  he  enjoyed  himself  a great  deal? 
History  never  thinks  of  such  things ; they 
are  valueless  and  disappear  from  the 
world’s  memory.  The  thing  that  lives  is 
a manjs  goodness,  his  great  deeds,  his 
virtue,  or  his  heroism.” 

If  the  questioner  was  not  quite  satis- 
fied, Zeno  used  another  argument.  He 
would  bid  him  answer  honestly  for  him- 
self: ‘‘Would  you  yourself  really  like 
to  be  rich  and  corrupted?  To  have 
abundance  of  pleasure  and  be  a worse 
man?”  And,  apparently,  when  Zeno’s 
eyes  were  upon  you,  it  was  difficult  to 


34  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

say  you  would.  Some  Stoics  took  a 
particular  instance.  jWhen  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton,  the  liberators  of  Athens, 
slew  the  tyrant  Hipparchus  (which  is 
always  taken  as  a praiseworthy  act), 
the  tyrant’s  friends  seized  a certain  young 
girl,  named  Leaina,  who  was  the  mistress 
of  Aristogeiton,  and  tortured  her  to 
make  her  divulge  the  names  of  the  con- 
spirators. And  under  the  torture  the 
girl  bit  out  her  tongue  and  died  without 
speaking  a word.  Now,  in  her  previous 
life  we  may  assume  that  Leaina  had  had 
a good  deal  of  gaiety.  Which  would  you 
sooner  have  as  your  own — the  early  life 
of  Leaina,  which  was  full  of  pleasures,  or 
the  last  hours  of  Leaina,  which  were  full 
of  agony?  And  with  a Stoic’s  eyes  upon 
them,  as  before,  people  found  it  hard  to 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  35 


say  the  first.  They  yielded  their  arms 
and  confessed  that  goodness,  and  not  any 
kind  of  pleasure,  is  the  good.  + 

But  now  comes  an  important  question, 
and  the  answer  to  it,  I will  venture  to 
suggest,  just  redeems  Stoicism  from  the 
danger  of  becoming  one  of  those  inhuman 
cast-iron  systems  by  which  mankind  may 
be  browbeaten,  but  against  which  it 
secretly  rebels.  What  is  Goodness?  What 
is  this  thing  which  is  the  only  object 
worth  living  for? 

Zeno  seems  to  have  been  a little  im- 
patient of  the  question.  We  know  quite 
well ; everybody  knows  who  is  not  blinded 
by  passion  or  desire.  Still,  the  school 
consented  to  analyze  it.  And  the  pro- 
found common  sense  and  reasonableness 


36 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


of  average  Greek  thought  expressed  the 
answer  in  its  own  characteristic  way. 

./  Let  us  see  in  practice  what  we  mean  by 
“good.”  Take  a good  bootmaker,  a 
good  father,  a good  musician,  a good  horse, 


a good  chisel ; you  vvill  find  that  each  on<£ 
of  them  has  some  function  to  perform, 
some  special  work  to  do;  and  a good  one  '' 
does  the  work  well.  Goodness  .is  per-  L 


forming.-y our. .function  well.  But  when 
we  say  “well”  we  are  still  using  the  idea 
of  goodness.  What  do  we  mean  by 
doing  it  “well”?  Here  the  Greek  falls 
back  on  a scientific  conception  which  had 
great  influence  in  the  fifth  century  B.c., 
and,  somewhat  transformed  and  differ- 
ently named,  has  regained  it  in  our  own 
days.  We  call  it  “Evolution.”  The 
Greeks  called  it  Phusis,  a word  which  we 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  37 

translate  by  “Nature,”  but  which  seems 
to  mean  more  exactly  “growth,”  or 
“the  process  of  growth.”1  It  is  Phusis 
which  gradually  shapes  or  tries  to  shape 
every  living  thing  into  a more  perfect 
form.  ^ It  shapes  the  seed,  by  infinite  and 
exact  gradations,  into  the  oak;  the  blind 
puppy  into  the  good  hunting  dog;  the 
savage  tribe  into  the  civilized  city.  If 
you  analyze  this  process,  you  find  that 
Phusis  is  shaping  each  thing  towards  the 
fulfilment  of  its  own  function — that 
is,  towards  the  good.  Of  course  Phusis 
sometimes  fails;  some  of  the  blind  pup- 
pies die;  some  of  the  seeds  never  take 
root.  Again,  when  proper  develop- 
ment has  been  reached,  it  is  generally 

1 See  a paper  by  Professor  J.  L.  Myres,  “The  Back- 
ground of  Greek  Science,”  University  of  California 
Chronicle,  xvi.,  4. 


38 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


followed  by  decay;  that,  too,  seems  like  a 
failure  in  the  work  of  Phusis.  I will  not 
consider  these  objections  now;  they  would 
take  us  too  far  afield,  and  we  shall  need  a 
word  about  them  later.  Let  us  in  the 
meantime  accept  this  conception  of  a 
force  very  like  that  which  most  of  us 
assume  when  we  speak  of  evolution; 
especially,  perhaps,  it  is  like  what  Berg- 
son  calls  La  Vie  or  L'Elan  Vital  at  the 
back  of  V Evolution  Creatrice,  though  to 
the  Greeks  it  seemed  still  more  personal 
and  vivid ; a force  which  is  present  in  all 
the  live  world,  and  is  always  making 
things  grow  towards  the  fulfilment  of  their 
utmost  capacity.  We  see  now  what 
t,  goodness  is ; it  is  living  or  acting  accord- 
ing to  Phusis,  working  with  Phusis  in  her 
eternal  effort  towards  perfection.  You 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


39 


will  notice,  of  course,  that  the  phrase 
means  a good  deal  more  than  we  usually 
mean  by  living  “according  to  nature.” 
It  does  not  mean  “living  simply,”  or 
“ living  like  the  natural  man.”  It  means 
living  according  to  the  spirit  which  makes 
the  world  grow  and  progress.  . 

This  Phusis  becomes  in  Stoicism  the 
centre  of  much  speculation  and  much 
effort  at  imaginative  understanding.  It 

i 

is  at  work  everywhere.  It  is  like  a soul, 
or  a life-force,  running  through  all  matter 
as  the  “ soul  ” or  life  of  a man  runs  through 
all  his  limbs.  It  is  the  soul  of  the  wprld: 
Now,  it  so  happened  that  in  Zeno’s  time 
the  natural  sciences  had  made  a great 
advance,  especially  Astronomy,  Botany, 
and  Natural  History.  This  fact  had 
made  people  familiar  with  the  notion  of 


40 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


natural  law.  Law  was  a principle  which 
ran  through  all  the  movements  of  what 
they  called  the  Kosmos,  on  “ordered 
world.  T Thus  Phusis,  the  life  of  the 
world,  is,  from  another  point  of  view,  the 
Law  of  Nature;  it  is  the  great  chain  of 
causation  by  which  all  events  occur;  for 
the  Phusis  which  shapes  things  towards 
their  end  acts  always  by  the  laws  of 
causation.  Phusis  is  not  a sort  of  ar- 
bitrary personal  goddess,  upsetting  the 
natural  order ; Phusis  is  the  natural  order, 
and  nothing  happens  without  a cause. 

A natural  law,  yet  a natural  law  which 


s alive,  which  is  itself  life.  It  becomes 
ndistinguishable  from  a purpose,  the 
purpose  of  the  great  world-process.  It 
is  like  a foreseeing,  forethinking  power — 
Pronoia;  our  common  word  “Providence  ” 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  41 


is  the  Latin  translation  of  this  Pronoia, 
though  of  course  its  meaning  has  been 
rubbed  down  and  cheapened  in  the  pro- 
cess of  the  ages.  As  a principle  of  pro- 
vidence or  forethought  it  comes  to  be 
regarded  as  God,  the  nearest  approach  to 
a definite  personal  God  which  is  admitted 
3y  the  austere  logic  of  Stoicism.  And, 

Since  it  must  be  in  some  sense  material, 
t is  made  of  the  finest  material  there  is; 
t is  made  of  fire,  not  ordinary  fire,  but 
what  they  called  intellectual  fire.  A 
fire  which  is  present  in  a warm,  live  man, 
and  not  in  a cold,  dead  man;  a fire  which 
has  consciousness  and  life,  and  is  not 
subject  to  decay.  This  fire,  Phusis,  God, 
is  in  all  creation. 


We  are  led  to  a very  definite  and  com- 
plete Pantheism.  The  Sceptic  begins  to 


4 2 The  Stoic  Philosophy 


make  his  usual  objections.  “God  in 
worms?”  he  asks.  “God  in  fleas  and 
dung  beetles?”  And,  as  usual,  the  ob- 
jector is  made  to  feel  sorry  that  he  spoke. 
“Why  not?”  the  Stoic  answers;  “cannot 
an  earthworm  serve  God?  Do  you 
suppose  that  it  is  only  a general  who  is  a 
good  soldier?  Cannot  the  lowest  private 
or  camp  attendant  fight  his  best  and  give 
N/Vhis  life  for  his  cause?  Happy  are  you  if 
you  are  serving  God,  and  carrying  out  the 
great  purpose  as  truly  as  such-and-such 
an  earthworm.  ” That  is  the  conception. 
All  the  world  is  working  together.  It  is 
all  one  living  whole,  with  one  soul  through 
it.  And,  as  a matter  of  fact,  no  single 
part  of  it  can  either  rejoice  or  suffer 
without  all  the  rest  being  affected.  The 
man  who  does  not  see  that  the  good  of 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


43 


f every  living  creature  is  his  good,  the 
I hurt  of  every  living  creature  his  hurt,  is 
/ one  who  wilfully  makes  himself  a kind  of 
outlaw  or  exile:  he  is  blind,  or  a fool. 
So  we  are  led  up  to  the  great  doctrine  of 
the  later  Stoics,  the  2vfj.7ta6sia  tg5v 
o\cov,  or  Sympathy  of  the  Whole;  a 
grand  conception,  the  truth  of  which  is 
illustrated  in  the  ethical  world  by  the 
feelings  of  good  men,  and  in  the  world  of 
natural  science — we  modems  may  be  ex- 
cused for  feeling  a little  surprise — by  the 
fact  that  the  stars  twinkle.  It  is  because 
they  are  so  sorry  for  us:  as  well  they 
may  be! 

f Thus  Goodness  is  acting,  according  to 
Phusis,  in  harmony  with  the  will  of  God. 

- But  here  comes  an  obvious  objection. 
If  God  is  all,  how  can  any  one  do  other- 


44  The  Stoic  Philosophy 


wise?  God  is  the  omnipresent  Law; 
f God  is  all  Nature;  no  one  can  help  being 
jin  harmony  with  Him.  The  answer  is 
that  God  is  in  all  except  in  the  doings  of 
bad  men.  For  man  is  free.  . . . How 
do  we  know  that?  Why,  by  a katalpetike 
phantasm , a comprehensive  sense-im- 
pression which  it  is  impossible  to  resist. 
Why  it  should  be  so  we  cannot  tell. 
“God  might  have  preferred  chained 
slaves  for  his  fellow-workers;  but,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  preferred  free  men.” 
^Man’s  soul,  being  actually  a portion 
pf  the  divine  fire,  has  the  same  free- 
dom that  God  himself  has.  He  can 
act  either  with  God  or  against  him, 
though,  of  course,  when  he  acts  against 
him  he  will  ultimately  be  overwhelmed. 
Thus  Stoicism  grapples  with  a diffi- 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  <3 

culty  which  no  religion  has  satisfac- 
torily solved. 

You  will  have  observed  that  by  now  we 
have  worked  out  two  quite  different  types  > 
of  Stoic — one  who  defies  the  world  anc| 
one  who  works  with  the  world ; and,  as  in 
Christianity,  both  types  are  equally  or- 
thodox. We  have  first  the  scorner  of  all 
earthly  things.  Nothing  but  goodness 
is  good;  nothing  but  badness  bad.  Pain, 
pleasure,  health,  sickness,  human  friend- 
ship and  affection,  are  all  indifferent. 
The  truly  wise  man  possesses  his  soul 
in  peace;  he  communes  with  God. 
He  always,  with  all  his  force,  wills 
the  will  of  God;  thus  everything  that 
befalls  him  is  a fulfilment  of  his  own 
will  and  good.  A type  closely  akin  to 


46  The  Stoic  Philosophy 


the  early  Christian  ascetic  or  the  Indian 
saint. 

And  in  the  second  place  we  have  the 
man  who,  while  accepting  the  doctrine 
•that  only  goodness  is  good,  lays  stress 
upon  the  definition  of  goodness.  It  is 
acting  according  to  Phusis,  in  the  spirit 
of  that  purpose  or  forethought  which, 
though  sometimes  failing,  is  working 
always  unrestingly  for  the  good  of  the 
world,  and  which  needs  its  fellow-workers. 
God  is  helping  the  whole  world;  you  can 
only  help  a limited  fraction  of  the  world. 
But  you  can  try  to  work  in  the  same  spirit. 
There  were  certain  old  Greek  myths 
which  told  how  Heracles  and  other  heroes 
had  passed  laborious  lives  serving  and 
helping  humanity,  and  in  the  end  became 
gods.  The  Stoics  used  such  myths  as 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  47 


allegories.  That  was  the  way  to  heaven; 
that  was  how  a man  may  at  the  end 
of  his  life  become  not  a dead  body, 
but  a star.  In  the  magnificent  phrase 
which  Pliny  translates  from  a Greek 
Stoic,  God  is  that,  and  nothing  but 
that;  man’s  true  God  is  the  help- 
ing of  man ; Deus  est  mortali  iuvare 
mortalem. 

No  wonder  such  a religion  appealed  to 
kings  and  statesmen  and  Roman  govern- 
ors. Nearly  all  the  successors  of  Alexan- 
der— we  may  say  all  the  principal  kings 
in  existence  in  the  generations  following 
Zeno — professed  themselves  Stoics.  And 
the  most  famous  of  all  Stoics,  Marcus 
Aurelius,  found  his  religion  not  only  in 
meditation  and  religious  exercises,  but  in 
working  some  sixteen  hours  a day  for  the 


48  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

good  practical  government  of  the  Roman 
Empire. 

Is  there  any  real  contradiction  or  in- 
consistency between  the  two  types  of 
Stoic  virtue?  On  the  surface  certainly 
there  seems  to  be;  and  the  school  felt  it, 
and  tried  in  a very  interesting  way  to 
meet  it.  "The  difficulty  is  this:  what 
is  the  good  of  working  for  the  welfare  of 
humanity  if  such  welfare  is  really  worth- 

V 

less?*  Suppose,  by  great  labour  and  skill, 
you  succeed  in  reducing  the  death-rate 
of  a plague-stricken  area;  suppose  you 
make  a starving  countryside  prosperous ; 
what  is  the  good  of  it  all  if  health  and 
riches  are  in  themselves  worthless,  and  not 
a whit  better  than  disease  and  poverty? 

V The  answer  is  clear  and  uncompromis- 
ing. A good  bootmaker  is  one  who 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  49 


makes  good  boots;  a good  shepherd  is 
one  who  keeps  his  sheep  well;  and  even 
though  good  boots  are,  in  the  Day-of- 
Judgment  sense,  entirely  worthless,  and 
fat  sheep  no  whit  better  than  starved 
sheep,  yet  the  good  bootmaker  or  good 
shepherd  must  do  his  work  well  or  he  will 

cease  to  be  good.  I To  be  good  he  must 

— 

perform  his  function;  and  in  performing 
that  function  there  are  certain  things 
that  he  must  “prefer”  to  others,  even 
though  they  are  not  really  “good.”  He 
must  prefer  a healthy  sheep  or  a well- 
made  boot  to  their  opposites.  It  is  thus 
that  Nature,  or  Phusis,  herself  works 
when  she  shapes  the  seed  into  the  tree,  or 
the  blind  puppy  into  the  good  hound. 
The  perfection  of  the  tree  or  hound  is  in 
itself  indifferent,  a thing  of  no  ultimate 


4 


50  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

value.  Yet  the  goodness  of  Nature  lies 
in  working  for  that  perfection. 

Life  becomes,  as  the  Stoics  more  than 
once  tell  us,  like  a play  which  is  acted  or 
a game  played  with  counters.  Viewed 
from  outside,  the  counters  are  valueless; 
but  to  those  engaged  in  the  game  their 
importance  is  paramount.  What  really 
and  ultimately  matters  is  that  the  game 
shall  be  played  as  it  should  be  played, 
v God,  the  eternal  dramatist,  has  cast  you 
for  some  part  in  His  drama,  and  hands  you 
the  role.  It  may  turn  out  that  you  are 

i 

cast  for  a triumphant  king ; it  may  be  for 
a slave  who  dies  of  torture.  What  does 
that  matter  to  the  good  actor?  He  can 
play  either  part;  his  only  business  is  to 
accept  the  role  given  him,  and  to  perform 
it  well?  Similarly,  life  is  a game  of 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  51 


counters.  Your  business  is  to  play  it  in 
the  right  way.  He  who  set  the  board 
may  have  given  you  many  counters ; he 
may  have  given  you  few.  He  may  have 
arranged  that,  at  a particular  point  in  the 
game,  most  of  your  men  shall  be  swept 
accidentally  off  the  board.  You  will  lose 
the  game ; but  why  should  you  mind  that? 
It  is  your  play  that  matters,  not  the  score 
that  you  happen  to  make.  ^He  is  not  a 
fool  to  judge  you  by  your  mere  success  or 
failure.  Success  or  failure  is  a thing  He 
can  determine  without  stirring  a hand. 
It  hardly  interests  Him.  What  interests  j 
Him  is  the  one  thing  which  He  cannot 
determine — the  action  of  your  free  and 
conscious  will,  f ^ ^ 

This  view  is  so  sublime  and  so  stirring 


52  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

that  at  times  it  almost  deadens  one’s 
power  of  criticism.  Let  us  see  how  it 
works  in  a particular  case.  Suppose 
your  friend  is  in  sorrow  or  pain,  what  are 
you  to  do?  In  the  first  place,  you  may 
sympathize — since  sympathy  runs  all 
through  the  universe,  and  if  the  stars 
sympathize  surely  you  yourself  may.  And 
of  course  you  must  help.  That  is  part  of 
your  function.  Yet,  all  the  time,  while 
you  are  helping  and  sympathizing,  are  you 
not  bound  to  remember  that  your  friend’s 
pain  or  sorrow  does  not  really  matter  at 
all?  He  is  quite  mistaken  in  imagining 
that  it  does.  v Similarly,  if  a village  in 
your  district  is  threatened  by  a band  of 
robbers,  you  will  rush  off  with  soldiers  to 
save  it;  you  will  make  every  effort,  you 
will  give  your  life  if  necessary.  But 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  53 

suppose,  after  all,  you  arrive  too  late, 
and  find  the  inhabitants  with  their 
throats  cut  and  the  village  in  ruins — why 
should  you  mind?  You  know  it  does  not 
matter  a straw  whether  the  villagers’ 
throats  are  cut  or  not  cut;  all  that 
matters  is  how  they  behaved  in  the  hour 
of  death.  V Mr.  Bevan,  whose  studies  of 
the  Stoics  and  Sceptics  form  a rare  com- 
pound of  delicate  learning  and  historical 
imagination,  says  that  the  attitude  of  the 
Stoic  in  a case  like  this  is  like  that  of  a 
messenger  boy  sent  to  deliver  a parcel  to 
someone,  with  instructions  to  try  various 
addresses  in  order  to  find  him.  The 
good  messenger  boy  will  go  duly  to  all  the 
addresses,  but  if  the  addressee  is  not  to  be 
found  at  any  of  them  what  does  that 
matter  to  the  messenger  boy?  He  has 


54 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


done  his  duty,  and  the  parcel  itself  has 
no  interest  for  him.  He  may  return  and 
say  he  is  sorry  that  the  man  cannot  be 
found;  but  his  sorrow  is  not  heartfelt. 

It  is  only  a polite  pretence. 

The  comparison  is  a little  hard  on  the 
Stoics.  No  doubt  they  are  embarrassed 
at  this  point  between  the  claims  of  high 
logic  and  of  human  feeling.  But  they 
meet  the  embarrassment  bravely.  “You 
will  suffer  in  your  friend’s  suffering,’’ 
-says  Epictetus.  “Of  course  you  will 
suffer.  I do  not  say  that  you  must  not 
even  groan  aloud.  Yet  in  the  centre  of  f 
your  being  do  not  groan ! ’'Ect  coder  }xevroi 
fj.r}  6TevaZtf.”  It  is  very  like  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  resignation.  Man  can- 
not but  suffer  for  his  fellow-man;  yet  a 
Christian  is  told  to  accept  the  will  of 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  55 

God  and  believe  that  ultimately,  in  some 
way  which  he  does  not  see,  the  Judge  of 
the  World  has  done  right. 

Finally,  what  is  to  be  the  end  after  tnis 
life  of  Stoic  virtue?  Many  religions, 
after  basing  their  whole  theory  of  con- 
duct on  stern  duty  and  self-sacrifice  and 
contempt  for  pleasure,  lapse  into  confess- 
ing the  unreality  of  their  professions  by 
promising  the  faithful  as  a reward  that 
they  shall  be  uncommonly  happy  in  the 
next  world.  It  was  not  that  they  really 
disdained  pleasure;  it  was  only  that  they 
speculated  for  a higher  rate  of  interest  at 
a later  date.  Notably,  Islam  is  open  to 
that  criticism,  and  so  is  a great  deal  of 
popular  Christianity.  Stoicism  is  not. 
It  maintains  its  ideal  unchanged. 


56  The  Stoic  Philosophy 


You  remember  that  we  touched,  in 
passing,  the  problem  of  decay.  Nature 
shapes  things  towards  their  perfection, 
but  she  also  lets  them  fall  away  after 
reaching  a certain  altitude.  She  fails 
constantly,  though  she  reaches  higher  and 
higher  success.  In  the  end,  said  the  Stoic 
— and  he  said  it  not  very  confidently,  as  a 
suggestion  rather  than  a dogma — in  the 
very  end,  perfection  should  be  reached, 
and  then  there  will  be  no  falling  back.  All 
the  world  will  have  been  wrought  up  to 
the  level  of  the  divine  soul.  That  soul 
is  Fire;  and  into  that  Fire  we  shall  all  be 
drawn,  our  separate  existence  and  the 
dross  of  our  earthly  nature  burnt  utterly 
away.^  Then  there  will  be  no  more  decay  J 

or  growth;  no  pleasure,  no  disturbance. 

— 

It  may  be  a moment  of  agony,  but  what 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  57 


does  agony  matter?  It  will  be  ecstasy 
and  triumph,  the  soul  reaching  its  fiery 
union  with  God. 

The  doctrine,  fine  as  it  is,  seems  always 
to  have  been  regarded  as  partly  fanciful, 
and  not  accepted  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
Stoic  creed.  Indeed,  many  Stoics  con- 
sidered that  if  this  Absorption  in  Fire 
should  occur,  it  could  not  be  final.  For 
the  essence  of  Goodness  is  to  do  some- 
thing, to  labour,  to  achieve  some  end;  \oo 
and  if  Goodness  is  to  exist  the  world  pro- 
cess must  begin  again.  God,  so  to  speak, 
cannot  be  good  unless  He  is  striving  and 
helping.  Phusis  must  be  moving  up- 
ward, or  else  it  is  not  Phusis. 


Thus  Stoicism,  whatever  its  weak- 
nesses, fulfilled  the  two  main  demands 


58 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


that  man  makes  upon  his  religion : it  gave 
him  armour  when  the  world  was  predomi- 
nantly evil,  arK^t  encouraged  him  forward 
when  the  world  was  predominantly  good. 

It  afforded  guidance  both  for  the  saint 
and  the  public  servant.  And  in  develop- 
ing this  twofold  character  I think  it  was 
not  influenced  by  mere  inconstancy.  It 
was  trying  to  meet  the  actual  truth  of  the 
situation.  For  in  most  systems  it  seems 
to  be  recognized  that  in  the  Good  Life 
there  is  both  an  element  of  outward  striv- 
ing and  an  element  of  inward  peace. 

There  are  things  which  we  must  try  to 
attain,  yet  it  is  not  really  the  attainment 
that  matters;  it  is  the  seeking — -And,  v^l 0 O 
consequently,  in  some  sense,  the  real 
victory  is  with  him  who  fought  best,  not 
with  the  man  who  happened  to  win.  For 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  59 


beyond  all  the  accidents  of  war,  beyond 
the  noise  of  armies  and  groans  of  the 
dying,  there  is  the  presence  of  some 
eternal  friend.  It  is  our  relation  to  Him 
that  matters. 

A Friend  behind  phenomena — I owe 
the  phrase  to  Mr.  Bevan.  It  is  the 
assumption  which  all  religions  make,  and 
sooner  or  later  all  philosophies.  The 
main  criticism  which  I should  be  inclined 
to  pass  on  Stoicism  would  lie  here.  Start- 
ing out  with  every  intention  of  facing  the 
problem  of  the  world  by  hard  thought  and 
observation,  resolutely  excluding  all  ap- 
peal to  tradition  and  mere  mythology, 
it  ends  by  making  this  tremendous  as-j/^ 
sumption,  that  there  is  a beneficent 
purpose  in  the  world  and  that  the  force 
which  moves  nature  is  akin  to  ourselves. 


60  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

1/ 

If  we  once  grant  that  postulate,  the  de- 
tails of  the  system  fall  easily  into  place. 
There  may  be  some  overstatement  about  y 
the  worthlessness  of  pleasure  and  worldly 
goods;  though,  after  all,  if  there  is  a 
single  great  purpose  in  the  universe,  and 
that  purpose  good,  I think  we  must  admit 
that,  in  comparison  with  it,  the  happiness 
of  any  individual  at  this  moment  dwindles 
into  utter  insignificance.  The  good,  and 
not  any  pleasure  or  happiness,  is  what 
matters.  If  there  is  no  such  purpose, 
well,  then  the  problem  must  all  be  stated 
afresh  from  the  beginning. 

A second  criticism,  which  is  passed  by 
modern  psychologists  on  the  Stoic  system, 
is  more  searching  but  not  so  dangerous. 
The  language  of  Stoicism,  as  of  all  ancient 
philosophy,  was  based  on  a rather  crude 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  61 

psychology.  It  was  over-intellectualized. 

It  paid  too  much  attention  to  fully  con- 
scious and  rational  processes,  and  too 
little  attention  to  the  enormously  larger  ^ 
part  of  human  conduct  which  is  below  the 
level  of  consciousness.  It  saw  life  too 
much  as  a series  of  separate  mental  acts, 
and  not  sufficiently  as  a continuous,  ever- 
changing  stream.  Yet  a very  little  cor- 
rection of  statement  is  all  that  it  needs. 
Stoicism  does  not  really  make  reason  into 
a motive  force.  It  explains  that  an 
“impulse,”  or  opw,  of  physical  or  bio- 
logical origin  rises  in  the  mind  prompting 
to  some  action,  and  then  Reason  gives 
or  withholds  its  assent  (evyHaToldeois). 
There  is  nothing  seriously  wrong  here. 

Other  criticisms,  based  on  the  unreality  ^ 
of  the  ideal  Wise  Man,  who  acts  without 


62 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


desire  and  makes  no  errors,  seem  to  me 
of  smaller  importance.  They  depend 
chiefly  on  certain  idioms  or  habits  of 
language,  which,  though  not  really  exact, 
convey  a fairly  correct  meaning  to  those 
accustomed  to  them. 

But  the  assumption  of  the  Eternal 
Purpose  stands  in  a different  category. 
However  much  refined  away,  it  remains 
a vast  assumption.  We  may  discard 
what  Professor  William  James  used  to 
call  “Monarchical  Deism”  or  our  own 
claim  to  personal  immortality.  We  may 
base  ourselves  on  Evolution,  whether  of 
the  Darwinian  or  the  Bergsonian  sort. 
But  we  do  seem  to  find,  not  only  in  all 
religions,  but  in  practically  all  philoso- 
phies, some  belief  that  man  is  not  quite 
alone  in  the  universe,  but  is  met  in  his 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  63 

endeavours  towards  the  good  by  some 
external  help  or  sympathy.  We  find  it 
everywhere  in  the  unsophisticated  man. 
We  find  it  in  the  unguarded  self-revela- 
tions  of  the  most  severe  and  conscientious 
Atheists.  Now,  the  Stoics,  like  many 
other  schools  of  thought,  drew  an  argu- 
ment from  this  consensus  of  all  mankind. 
It  was  not  an  absolute  proof  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Gods  or  Providence,  but  it  was 
a strong  indication.  The  existence  of  a 
common  instinctive  belief  in  the  mind  of 
man  gives  at  least  a presumption  that 
there  must  be  a good  cause  for  that 
belief. 

This  is  a reasonable  position.  There 
must  be  some  such  cause.  But  it  does 
not  follow  that  the  only  valid  cause  is 
the  truth  of  the  content  of  the  belief. 


64 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


I cannot  help  suspecting  that  this  is 
precisely  one  of  those  points  on  which 
Stoicism,  in  company  with  almost  all 
philosophy  up  to  the  present  time,  has 
gone  astray  through  not  sufficiently  real- 
izing its  dependence  on  the  human  mind 
as  a natural  biological  product.  For  it  is  ' 
very  important  in  this  matter  to  realize 
that  the  so-called  belief  is  not  really  an 
intellectual  judgment  so  much  as  a crav-  „ 
ing  of  the  whole  nature. 

It  is  only  of  very  late  years  that  psy- 
chologists have  begun  to  realize  the 
enormous  dominion  of  those  forces  in 
man  of  which  he  is  normally  unconscious. 
We  cannot  escape  as  easily  as  these 
brave  men  dreamed  from  the  grip  of  the 
blind  powers  beneath  the  threshold.  In- 
deed, as  I see  philosophy  after  philosophy 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  65 

falling  into  this  unproven  belief  in  the 
Friend  behind  phenomena,  as  I find  that 
I myself  cannot,  except  for  a moment  and 
by  an  effort,  refrain  from  making  the 
same  assumption,  it  seems  to  me  that 
perhaps  here  too  we  are  under  the  spell  of 
a very  old  ineradicable  instinct.  We  are 
gregarious  animals;  our  ancestors  have 
been  such  for  countless  ages.  We  cannot 
help  looking  out  on  the  world  as  gre- 
garious animals  do;  we  see  it  in  terms  of 
humanity  and  of  fellowship.  Students 
of  animals  under  domestication  have 
shown  us  how  the  habits  of  a gregarious 
creature,  taken  away  from  his  kind,  are 
shaped  in  a thousand  details  by  reference 
to  the  lost  pack  which  is  no  longer  there — 
the  pack  which  a dog  tries  to  smell  his 
way  back  to  all  the  time  he  is  out  walking, 


66  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

the  pack  he  calls  to  for  help  when  danger 
threatens.  It  is  a strange  and  touching 
thing,  this  eternal  hunger  of  the  gregari- 
ous animal  for  the  herd  of  friends  who  are 
not  there.  And  it  may  be,  it  may  very 
possibly  be,  that,  in  the  matter  of  this 
Friend  behind  phenomena,  our  own 
yearning  and  our  own  almost  ineradicable 
instinctive  conviction,  since  they  are  cer- 
tainly not  founded  on  either  reason  or 
observation,  are  in  origin  the  groping  of  a 
lonely-souled  gregarious  animal  to  find 
its  herd  or  its  herd-leader  in  the  great 
spaces  between  the  stars. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  a belief  very  difficult  to 
get  rid  of. 


Note. — Without  attempting  a bibliography  of 
Stoicism,  I may  mention  the  following  books  as 
likely  to  be  useful  to  a student:  (i)  Original  Stoic 


/ 


The  Stoic  Philosophy  67 

Literature.  Epictetus,  Discourses,  etc.;  trans- 
lated by  P.  E.  Matheson,  Oxford,  1915.  Marcus 
Aurelius,  To  Himself;  translated  by  J.  Jackson, 
Oxford,  1906.  Stoicorum  Veterum  Fragmenta, 
collected  by  Von  Arnim,  1903-1905.  (2)  Modern 
Literature.  Roman  Stoicism  (Cambridge,  1911), 
by  E.  V.  Arnold;  a very  thorough  and  useful  piece 
of  work.  Stoics  and  Sceptics,  by  Edwyn  Bevan 
(Oxford,  1913);  slighter,  but  illuminating.  The 
doctrine  of  the  things  which  are  “preferred” 
( nporjynsva ),  though  not  “good,”  was,  I think, 
first  correctly  explained  by  H.  Gomperz,  Lebens- 
auffassung  der  Griechischen  Philosophie,  1904. 
Professor  Arnold’s  book  contains  a large  bibli- 
ography. 


*> 


Appendices 


69 


APPENDIX  A 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 
NOTES  CONCERNING  MONCURE 
DANIEL  CONWAY 

1832.  Born  in  Virginia. 

1850.  Free  Schools  in  Virginia. 

1851.  Enters  Methodist  Ministry. 

1854.  Enters  Unitarian  Ministry. 

1858.  Marries. 

1863.  Comes  to  England. 

1864.  Preaches  at  South  Place  Chapel. 

1865.  Appointed  permanent  Minister. 

1869.  Abandonment  of  prayer,  followed  by 

gradual  abandonment  of  Theism. 

1870.  The  Earthward  Pilgrimage. 

1874.  The  Sacred  Anthology. 

1877.  Idols  and  Ideals. 

1883.  Lessons  for  the  Day  (2  vols.).  (Revised 
edition,  1907.) 

71 


72  The  Stoic  Philosophy 

1884.  Temporarily  retires  from  South  Place. 
1892.  Returns  to  South  Place. 

Life  of  Thomas  Paine. 

1897.  Death  of  Mrs.  Conway. 

Final  retirement  from  South  Place. 

1904.  Autobiography  (2  vols.). 

1906.  My  Pilgrimage  to  the  Wise  Men  of  the 

East. 

1907.  Dies  in  Paris. 

1909.  Moncure  D.  Conway  : Addresses  and  Re- 

prints. (A  Memorial  volume  contain- 
ing a complete  Bibliography.) 

1910.  First  Memorial  Lecture. 

1911.  Second  Memorial  Lecture. 

1912.  Third  Memorial  Lecture. 

1913.  Fourth  Memorial  Lecture. 

1914.  Fifth  Memorial  Lecture. 

1915.  Sixth  Memorial  Lecture. 


APPENDIX  B 


THE  CONWAY  MEMORIAL 
LECTURESHIP 

At  a general  meeting  of  the  South  Place  Ethi- 
cal Society,  held  on  October  22,  1908,  it  was 
resolved,  after  full  discussion,  that  an  effort 
should  be  made  to  establish  a series  of  lectures,  to 
be  printed  and  widely  circulated,  as  a permanent 
Memorial  to  Dr.  Conway. 

Moncure  Conway’s  untiring  zeal  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  human  mind  from  the  thral- 
dom of  obsolete  or  waning  beliefs,  his  pleadings 
for  sympathy  with  the  oppressed  and  for  a wider 
and  profounder  conception  of  human  fraternity 
than  the  world  has  yet  reached,  claim,  it  is  urged, 
an  offering  of  gratitude  more  permanent  than 
the  eloquent  obituary  or  reverential  service  of 
mourning. 

The  range  of  the  lectures  (of  which  the  sixth 
is  published  herewith)  must  be  regulated  by  the 
73 


74 


The  Stoic  Philosophy 


financial  support  accorded  to  the  scheme;  but  it 
is  hoped  that  sufficient  funds  will  be  forthcoming 
for  the  endowment  of  periodical  lectures  by  dis- 
tinguished public  men,  to  further  the  cause  of 
social,  political,  and  religious  freedom,  with 
which  Dr.  Conway’s  name  must  ever  be  asso- 
ciated. 

The  Committee,  although  not  yet  in  possession 
of  the  necessary  capital  for  the  permanent  endow- 
ment of  the  Lectureship,  thought  it  better  to 
inaugurate  the  work  rather  than  to  wait  for 
further  contributions.  The  funds  in  hand, 
together  with  those  which  may  reasonably  be 
expected  in  the  immediate  future,  will  ensure  the 
delivery  of  an  annual  lecture  for  some  years  at 
least. 

The  Committee  earnestly  appeal  either  for 
donations  or  subscriptions  from  year  to  year 
until  the  Memorial  is  permanently  established. 
Contributions  may  be  forwarded  to  the  Hon. 
Treasurer. 

On  behalf  of  the  Executive  Committee : — 

W.  C.  Coupland,  M.A.,  Chairman. 

(Mrs.)  C.  Fletcher  Smith  and  E.  J.  Fair- 
hall,  Hon.  Secretaries. 

(Mrs.)  F.  M.  Cockburn,  Hon.  Treasurer , 
“ Peradeniya,  ” Ashburton  Road,  Croydon. 


Ji  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM’S  SONS 

>9 


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